Shock is the only word to describe the reaction of so many as the jury verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case was read in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last Friday morning.
After all, wasn’t this the kid who brought a deadly weapon to a Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstration ?
Wasn’t this young man only 17 years old and too young to buy an assault weapon? Wasn’t this the young man who should have been off the streets because of a 7 p.m. curfew?
Wasn’t this the young man who pointed his weapon at unarmed people?
Wasn’t this the young man, captured on video, turning and firing four bullets into another man who was presumably chasing a potential shooter?
And when did subjective, teenage fear become an objective threat to one’s life?
Rittenhouse, who took the lives of two people and injured a third, was acquitted of all charges against him because he convinced a jury that he feared for his life.
The fact that he put himself into this fearful situation was deemed irrelevant by the jury. In coming to their conclusion, the jury found him innocent of all charges because they applied the low-bar Wisconsin laws to his situation.
Common sense tells us that there is something seriously wrong when there is no accountability for the mayhem that was captured on video on that fatal night in Kenosha. The real culprit here is not the jury, but the law that gave them no alternative. The judge’s instruction, painstakingly detailed, indicated that all the surrounding facts in the case were not sufficient to overcome the assertion of self defense that justified Rittenhouse’s acquittal.
While this court case is over, the Rittenhouse affair will be with us for many years ahead. There are those who are making him a folk hero and a defender of law and order. Second-Amendment defenders are on his side and think everyone should be allowed to carry deadly force to be ready to defend themselves. Still others are willing to give him a pass because he is a kid and, after all, the BLM demonstration was explosive and he just wanted to help the police.
On the other side of the ledger, many see this case as an invitation to greater violence in the name of self defense and the encouragement of vigilantes and wanna-be police. Because all of this has played out against the backdrop of a BLM demonstration, Rittenhouse is seen as the clear beneficiary of white privilege. Had he been a Black man, would the police have arrested him instead of giving him water as he strolled down the street with his AR-15 slung over his shoulder?
Common sense says that there should be some accountability for the deaths and injuries caused by Rittenhouse. Wisconsin law, unfortunately, does not take common sense into account.
Jurors did their job in the Rittenhouse case, but the case should not end here. This case should be a wakeup call about the kind of society that we are choosing to live in. The growing prevalence of guns should concern us all. The presence of deadly force in any situation always brings with it the potential for deadly escalation.
One has to wonder about what was going through the mind of a 17-year-old boy on the night he chose to bring deadly force to a demonstration that had spun out of control and become destructive.
He was not an emergency medical technician as he alleged. He was not a police officer. He had not been asked to help defend property. He had taken it upon himself to intrude into a situation that was clearly unpredictable. We saw him saunter down the street, gun over his shoulder, as if he were an invincible force to be reckoned with. At the end of the day, he was a kid with an oversized ego and colossal ignorance of the dangers that his presence might precipitate.
The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse should serve as a great civics lesson. If we think that justice was served and nothing more needs to be done in its aftermath, so be it. But if shock, disappointment and disbelief is our reaction, then more questions need to be raised. Judges need to be impartial, temperate, knowledgeable and wise. This judge was intemperate and even confused himself in instructing the jury. They should not be elected, as this judge was, running without opposition.
Laws need to be reviewed in terms of common sense. Without real accountability for outrageous behavior that can turn deadly, the safety and security of everyone is put at risk.
Long guns do not belong on the street in the hands of civilians. If we choose to keep gun ownership possible, restrictions on their use need to be written clearly into law.
While there may be many other issues that this case brings to light, at the least, it suggests that we all need to pay more attention to the laws that govern us, the people who implement them, and the people around us who think that they can take the law into their own hands.
Though Massachusetts is a very different state than Wisconsin, vigilance is always important and never out of style.
Msgr. Paul V. Garrity is a recently-retired priest of the Archdiocese of Boston. He can be reached at [email protected]
